Maf Tuigamala

Name: Ma’afu ‘Maf’ Tuigamala

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: Bayview Secondary School

Hobbies and Interests: School football team, volunteer work

Appearance: Maf is an imposing figure, standing at 6 foot 4 and weighing in at around 260 pounds, and he’s a balance between fat and toned, not the fittest specimen in the school but still more than capable of keeping up with the rest of the football team. He has close-cropped black hair and his face is fairly bullish, his nose broken five years ago and his dark, dull brown eyes and almost-constant frown perpetuating his almost thuggish look. He dresses typically, jeans, worn sneakers, branded t-shirts, basketball singlets, jackets and beanies generally composing his attire.

Biography: Ma’afu is an indigenous Fijian whose family emigrated from their native country in 1995 after their sugarcane farm was torched by disgruntled Indo-Fijian workers after his parents tried to cancel the land-lease of the Indo-Fijians currently working on the farm. Fearing their safety, they moved to the US and settled in St. Paul, where the family knew an Indo-Fijian family who they had been friendly with, but who had been forced to flee Fiji during the 1987 coup d’etats. Maf did not know a heck of a lot of English, and, while a genial and friendly child, his size (even when he was 6, he towered over students of his age) and his lack of fluency in the English language meant he was often ostracised from the other children. As such, Maf made a determined effort to learn English.

Thirteen or so years later, the near-silent Maf, who rarely talks out of convenience rather than necessity, has been essentially accepted into Bayview society. As an offensive guard for the Bayview Secondary School Football Team, Maf achieved notoriety for his infamous game-winning block on an opposing defensive tackle from Yelchin Secondary School, literally breaking the guy’s leg, allowing Bayview’s quarterback to score and helping the team win the game in the final seconds. Maf’s Hallmark moment of a game highlight did garner him much praise from his coach, teachers, teammates, classmates and community, but the defensive tackle whose leg he broke, Bret Kross, never recovered from the injury, and Bret’s animosity towards Maf, coupled with Maf’s already-prominent guilt over the matter, have led to Maf becoming angry if the play is even mentioned around him.

In other activities, Maf doesn’t do too badly. He doesn’t excel as a student – along with sitting 12th Grade English, Mathematics, Economics and Geography, he has been forced to retake 11th Grade Physics because of his low grades – but is a prominent figure in his community, his passive, docile, giving nature highlighted in his community work (he regularly cooks Sunday meals for his church congregation after services, and has been known to volunteer at the St. Paul Pound and at the local homeless shelter) and his affability and reliability when it comes to his friends.

Advantages: Maf is built like a brick shithouse, and so would be a formidable opponent in anyone’s books. Those who know him well also trust him unequivocally, so he’s unlikely to be the target of any real attempts on his life – early on, anyway.

Disadvantages: Maf’s not the smartest tool in the shed, and on top of that, he’s a docile, non-violent person but doesn’t look it. As it stands, many who don’t know him may perceive him to be a threat – and his trusting and pacifist nature aren’t going to help matters for him when that happens.

Designated Number: Male student no. 108

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Designated Weapon: Astra 400 (9mm) [x3 magazines (8 round capacity)]

Conclusion: It's certainly too bad B108 isn't violent, because if e was, he could be a real shaker in the game. As it is, I can't see him using that gun—or his impressive physique—for anything besides defense, which is a damn shame.

'The above biography is as written by Pigeon Army. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Pigeon Army, Inky

Kills: Nick Reid

Killed By: Ema Ryan

Collected Weapons: Astra 400 (9mm) [x3 magazines (8 round capacity)] (Assigned Weapon)

Allies: Jason Harris, Liam Brooks, Nathan Choultard, presumably Jennifer Perez

Enemies: Leila Langford, Nick Reid

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

 * Maf was handed off to Inky after Pigeon Army was forced to quit SOTF due to real life circumstances. Inky had already been taking care of him for the previous two threads before his handing off while Pigeon Army was away.
 * Maf's fight with Nick Reid was the first sword fight - or at least fight with bladed weaponry - in SOTF history.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Maf, in chronological order.

Pre-game:
 * Pumping Iron
 * Anniversary Party
 * The National Anthem
 * Decisions, Decisions
 * Let the Dance Begin!

V4:
 * Flowerhead
 * The Only Way Is Up
 * Carpe Noctum
 * Where Was My Brain?
 * Legoland Empire
 * The Dream Was Just The Same
 * I Will Follow You into the Dark
 * Beast of Burden
 * The Cavalry Arrives
 * Never Take Friendship Personal
 * Hatful of Hollow

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Maf Tuigamala. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * Ooh, this one's tough. I loved Maf in pregame. He was absolutely one of my favorite characters in the whole game. Pigeon managed to do something very difficult, shining with a character who was very understated and mild-mannered in most situations. In-game, Maf was part of one of the strongest early-game groups I've ever seen in SOTF (consisting of him, Nathan Choultard, Jason Harris, and Liam Brooks). Then, PA went away and left Maf being babysat.

A few issues materialized here, and they aren't anybody's fault. Basically, his babysitter kept Maf in the background, because the thought was PA would be back quickly to take over again. That got dragged out further and further, and so Maf slid from the spotlight in the meantime. It also meant Inky had less time to really get comfortable with Maf. By the time Maf was officially handed to him for keeps, it had been quite a while since he'd gotten to do much.

Maf picked up some after, resolving a few of his outstanding plotlines. He wasn't the same as under PA, but that was often the case with adopted kids, and Inky clearly put a lot of care into keeping up with stuff. Maf came off as becoming a bit more single-minded, a bit less caring and thoughtful, but that is, I think, an acceptable course for the game (full disclosure: I wrote with Maf pretty extensively under PA, since I was handling his quasi-love-interest). His showdown with Nick was a good moment for both characters, because they both basically lost everything they were trying for.

The problem, I think, is that that also spelled the end of Maf's natural character arc. Worse still, in suffering a concussion and forgetting almost everything that transpired in the confrontation, he lost out on the character development that offered. He was one of the many characters who sort of stumbled up to the rescue and then stumbled away again. This was super frustrating because it added nothing to his storyline or his group's story, didn't add all that much drama or mystery to the rescue, and made everyone involved look a bit silly. Afterwards, Maf never really regained his direction and just kind of stumbled around until getting killed in a rather random and needlessly violent way. I guess his storyline just went downhill after his fight with Nick, which is too bad because he had so much promise overall. - MurderWeasel